9. The Making of a Bed #2
I notice, too, that while I’m staring at them, a lot of them are staring at me, in my black uniform, which clearly sets me apart, although I’m sure my distinctly Rhavnan looks don’t help.
Do they think I’m a captured soldier?
What would they think if they knew the truth – that I’m a prisoner of war because I committed treason?
No one can know. Or Chapp’s attempt won’t be the last.
I’m pulled away from my thoughts by a younger soldier coming the other way with a tray of food. He’s heading right for me.
“Ara?” he says. His moon-shaped face cracks into a wide, warm smile. “It is you!”
It’s only then that recognition strikes.
“Rike,” I breathe. “Sisters. I didn’t realise it was you.”
And how would I have? He looks so different.
I’d known him as the boy who would read books with me in the library and stay with me after our lessons, so we could speak more to our tutor. He was only a year younger than me, so we naturally stuck together.
His head is shaved now – no evidence of the long dark locks he used to have. His dimpled face is clean and smooth, and though he looks thinner and older, his smile is wide.
“I’m so happy to see you,” he gushes.
“Rike,” I say again, and I can’t help it – I run to hug him, almost knocking the tray from his hand.
But the one-armed hug he gives me in return is loose.
I quickly let go.
“I can’t believe it,” I say. “You enlisted?”
“I told you I would.”
When there was talk of war on the horizon, Rike had vowed to me that he would enlist to get away from his father – who was Chief Commander of the Guard and was a notoriously foul man – as soon as he could.
Rike’s smile. It’s like it’s fixed in place.
Something’s not right.
“Why are you here?”
I look at his uniform.
Brown and red. Like everyone else’s.
My face drops.
“You—”
“I heard Chapp tried to shoot a prisoner last night,” Rike interrupts, concerned. “That wasn’t you, was it?”
“Oh, no. He attacked another prisoner. Drake.”
“Drake,” he repeats. “Nice. You don’t hear many Old Rhavnan names anymore. And you’re Ara! A perfect name match.”
I shift, conscious of Cosmer’s presence beside me. How he’s been watching this whole exchange stiffly.
“Yes,” I say, steady. “We did notice the name match. It’s… certainly a coincidence.”
“Maybe it will bring you both good luck.”
“Maybe.”
“Have you had your first corrective instruction with Dezeeves yet?”
“N-No. I just got here.”
“It’s really okay,” he says, pleasantly. Still with that same, strange, manic smile. His dimples burst. “I was scared at first, too. But you’re in safe hands. And you’ll learn quickly.”
Cosmer steps forward. “Okay, Rike. Time to move along.”
“Yes, Officer,” Rike replies curtly, with a swift nod.
He takes a seat at a bench with a group of others, and he looks like he’s exactly that.
One of them.
Seeing Rike is proof that whatever Dezeeves is doing to enemy soldiers is working. Rike would never fight against Rhavna. He loved his country.
And so do I.
If the conversion works on me, I’ll be fighting for people like Vikemy, alongside people like Chapp, who will still hate me and want me dead anyway.
But how to stop it?
Drake had said he’d known other Rhavnan soldiers to throw themselves overboard ships to avoid exactly this fate.
But what about my family? My loyalty may change, but isn’t that a small price to pay for my freedom? At least, once the war is over, I’ll be going back to them alive.
The thought doesn’t sit right with me. I’ll have to find a way I can do both. Get back to my family, and stay loyal. There must be a way to avoid this conversion, and Drake and I will find it.
At the front of the queue, I’m passed a wooden bowl of gruel and a tin cup of water.
Cosmer, meanwhile, is given nothing.
Oh. The I’m not allowed to eat the food here thing. I make a note to myself to try to understand what that’s about – and if it’s the reason he seems so thin.
“Well. Eat,” he says, when we’re seated at one of the packed benches.
I feel embarrassed, suddenly, that I ate in front of him yesterday. In the light of day, when I’m not even that hungry, it doesn’t seem fair to do that again.
“I’m actually okay this morning,” I say, sitting back. “Do you want this?”
He shrugs. “Only if you don’t.”
“Go ahead.” I slide the bowl towards him, and my spoon.
He stares at them. “Thank you,” he says, after a beat.
He eats slowly, as if savouring every mouthful.
I try to piece it together.
“So, you can eat, but you just can’t be served? Am I understanding that right?”
“Leave it, Ara,” he says. Firm.
I look over at Rike. He’s laughing. The sound is like a punch to my gut.
He seemed like he’d been about to tell me something.
If only I’d had more time.
I decide I’m irritated about that, and I let it show.
“Why didn’t you let me talk to Rike for longer?”
“You’d talked to him for long enough.”
I roll my eyes. “Drake. Rike. I’m just not allowed to have any male friends, am I?” I’m half joking.
But I’m half not.
“Of course you can have male friends. They just can’t be Rhavnan.”
He’s actually serious.
“Because they’re scum?”
He leans over the table. “No. Because it’s dangerous.
For you. And for them.” There’s a forcefulness in his eyes.
“You’re supposed to be Fully Integrating.
You want people to think you’re plotting something?
You want people to think Rike is? Do you know how that would end for him?
” He lowers his voice. “How that might end for all of you?”
He makes a subtle sweeping motion at the Mess Hall.
And I can see it. There are Rhavnan faces here, dotted around.
I think it through. “I need to Fully Integrate—”
He finishes my question. “Or you’re all out the airlock?” He pushes back his combed hair. “I don’t have the answer to that. But yes. Quite possibly—”
He’s cut off by someone slumping down beside him.
“Congratulations on making it through your first night alive,” Riss says to me, brusquely.
“Thanks,” I say, uncertainly.
To Cosmer, she says, “Only one attempt on their lives so far – which I thought we handled pretty well. I feel like that calls for a celebration.”
“Well, we know where Dezeeves stashes his rum.”
Riss bursts into laughter.
This is clearly a joke I don’t get.
The two of them are obviously good friends. Seem comfortable in each other’s company. But I actually can’t see there being anything more to their relationship than that.
For some reason, that thought brings on in me an odd sense of relief.
“Did you eat?” Drake – now beside me – asks, a little roughly.
“No. But I’m fine.”
I realise we’ve unknowingly – or maybe knowingly – seated ourselves in the same arrangement as yesterday. Drake and I opposite Riss and Cosmer.
Riss glances between Cosmer and I. “So – putting Chap’s attack aside – was it good between you last night?”
Cosmer, who had been trying to take a sip from his flask, sputters.
“What did you say?” he chokes.
She looks at all of us like she can’t believe we’re the same species as her.
“The sleeping arrangements. Did they work for you?”
“Yes,” Cosmer answers, wiping his mouth. “Why wouldn’t they have?”
“Good. Then we’ll keep them as they are.”
She gestures vaguely in Drake’s direction.
“Although you got lucky, Cosmer. This guy snores like an ogre. And that’s to normal ears, not mine.”
“Ogre?” Drake says, copying the Hevallan word Riss used. “What is that?”
I translate it for him into a Rhavnan equivalent – which is surprisingly tricky, as Rhavna has so many words for different mythical creatures.
“I do not snore like an ogre.”